Will the next Republican nominee for President support gay marriage? It is a question that was unthinkable years ago, but amid a rapid shift in public opinion and demographics, it is being seriously considered in GOP circles.

“At the rate this issue is changing within the party, I think it’s not out of the question,” said Margaret Hoover, a former George W. Bush White House aide and one of the leading Republican Party operatives calling for the recognition of same-sex marriages. “It’s not if, it’s when — 2016 or 2020,” said another Republican operative.

The confidence to even ask the question is buoyed by a sea change in Republican Party thinking on the issue over the past several weeks. Dozens of top party operatives and former politicians — including six former aides to Mitt Romney and seven current or former members of Congress — have signed onto an amicus brief supporting the legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8 in advance of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the gay-marriage ban. Ohio Senator Rob Portman endorsed gay marriage on Friday after revealing that his son is gay. And new polling has brought to light a clear shift in the opinions of Republicans and the nation at large.

Indeed, that was one of the key recommendations in the Republican Party’s 2012 autopsy: a critical need to soften the party’s position on gay marriage, which has become a threshold issue for many young voters.

On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus supported Portman’s decision to change his mind on gay marriage when asked how the party will try to reach out to gays and young voters into the fold, saying it was no different than embracing the so-called Liberty movement championed by Senator Rand Paul. “I think Senator Portman made some pretty big inroads last week,” Priebus told reporters. “I think it’s about being decent. I think it’s about dignity and respect, that nobody deserves to have their dignity diminished, or people don’t deserve to be disrespected. I think that there isn’t anyone in this room — Republican, Democrat, in the middle — that doesn’t think that Rob Portman, for example, is a good, conservative Republican. He is. And we know that.”

That comes barely six months since the party ratified its 2012 platform at the Republican Convention including a reaffirmation of its call for a marriage amendment to the Constitution and a defense of the Boy Scouts of America for banning gay scouts and troop leaders. “We applaud the citizens of the majority of states which have enshrined in their constitutions the traditional concept of marriage, and we support the campaigns under way in several other states to do so,” the platform states. “We condemn the hate campaigns, threats of violence, and vandalism by proponents of same-sex marriage against advocates of traditional marriage and call for a federal investigation in to attempts to deny religious believers their civil rights.”

“Our report speaks for one direction for the future of the party,” said Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary and an author of the RNC review of the 2012 election. “When they gather to write the next platform, they are hopefully going to take into account what we’re saying [and change].”

But evangelical opponents of same-sex marriage are predicting a swift and powerful backlash against the establishment driving the moderation.

“Obviously, this RNC report was designed to pander to the GOP’s wealthy elites, the same ones who encouraged Mitt Romney to ‘tone down his social-issues talk,’” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said in an e-mail to supporters. “Unfortunately for them, money doesn’t decide elections; people do. And the vast majority of the GOP base believes that marriage is a non-negotiable plank of the national platform.”

“I think it’s a media-generated narrative a week before the Supreme Court hears the case because the media tends to agree that same-sex marriage should be a constitutional right,” said Thomas Peters, communications director for the National Organization for Marriage. “There has been no change. Republicans who come out for gay marriage get a big check from [the pro-gay-marriage Republican donor] Paul Singer, a couple of weeks of news cycles, and then you quietly get destroyed in primaries.”

But an ABC News/Washington Postpoll released this week found that 52% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters ages 18 to 49 back gay marriage — the highest percentage ever recorded — with 81% of 18- to 29-year-olds supporting overall.

Alex Lundry, the director of data science for Romney’s campaign and a signatory to the amicus brief, described the past several weeks as a “pivotal moment” for the Republican Party on the issue, highlighting growth in a 24% increase in support among white evangelical Protestants and a 23% increase in self-identified conservatives over the past nine years.

“Evangelical millennials are 64% in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry,” he said. “This idea that there’s going to be a grassroots surge in opposition to establishment republicans who are coming out for this is hyperbolic. They’re moving, everyone’s moving.”

At the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference — to which Republican gay-marriage-supporting groups like GOProud were formally not invited — a panel urging moderation on the issue packed a small conference room. The organization’s executive director Jimmy LaSalvia told the assembled audience that the party needs to accept LGBT Americans if it wants to stop hemorrhaging young voters. “There are a few in our movement who just don’t like gay people, and in 2013 that’s just not O.K. anymore,” he said. “If we don’t publicly stand up to the bigots, then everyone assumes we agree with them … How can we expect [young voters] to listen if they think that conservatives hate their families and friends.”

The drumbeat of gay-marriage supporters within the Republican Party stands in contrast to their silence nationally on the issue during the 2012 election cycle, when they focused their efforts on the handful of states with ballot initiatives or amendments on the issue up for consideration. Advocates say they were fearful that forcing the issue would give more ammunition to Democrats to brand the Republican Party as out of touch in the form of social conservative denouncements.

And for the establishment Republicans who support gay marriage, the election reinforced their desire to push the party to moderate. “We were trying to have an election about the economy, and [to have this conversation within the party] would have been a distraction,” said David Kochel, an Iowa-based Romney adviser and one of many in the party establishment who have called for an embrace of same-sex marriages. “But that said, Obama wasn’t running a race about the economy. He was just killing us with this once he came out for same-sex marriage.”

“We all have been called bigots and homophobes because of the R next to our names, but we’re just not in a position to set policy yet,” said one swing-state operative who is supportive of gay marriage but won’t speak out publicly for professional reasons. “We’re the ‘elephants in the closet.’”

Even a casual survey finds that the vast majority of the Republican establishment under the age of 40 — the professional communicators, strategists and policy wonks — are all quietly supportive of same-sex marriage.

And while some of the “elephants” are coming out — Brad Dayspring, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a former aide to House majority leader Eric Cantor, publicly voiced his opposition to bans on gay marriage after the Portman announcement — it’s equally true that Republican candidates and elected officials have been slower to move on the issue than the people who work for them.

But a growing caucus of Republican operatives isn’t so sure, pointing to demographic trends. “I don’t think we need to see Republican elected officials pull a Portman and change their minds,” said one operative. “I think you will see less of an effort to talk about marriage, less of a need to push legislative actions on the floor, more tolerance for differing opinions on the issue. In the long term, Gen Y and millennial Republican candidates are going to be for it.”

And can a Republican in support of gay marriage win the notoriously conservative Iowa caucuses? “Absolutely they can — assuming they have the right conservative message,” Kochel, who ran Romney’s campaign in the state, said, pointing to the growth of the libertarian movement in the state.

Well, it's been a full day since DroopySayenough aka DeweySayenoff (downthread), poster girl for lesbianism, had her hissy fit at my passionate defense of heterosexuality. I posed my challenge and she chickened out. Figures. Spinelessness characterizes that demographic. So, as a showpiece for gayness, Droopy/Dewey succeeds admirably.

But it doesn't stop there. In her clumsy and raucous apologetic for homosexuality, the mule fell victim to hoof-in-mouth-disease. She gave us all a foretaste of the gay jackboot with her shrill charge that anyone who dares express any view contrary to her "orientation" is, of necessity, of like coloration, to wit, You disagree with me? YOU'RE GAY! You hate me? YOU'RE SO GAY! You fear me? HA! YOU'RE IRREFUTABLY GAY, GAY, GAAAAYY!! (Shriek) What a bubblehead buffoon, old Droopy/Dewey. But do not underestimate the arrogance that underlies the attitude, folks. Such nonsense might seem ridiculous but is spewed forth in deadly earnest. It's juuusst a matter of tiiimme...

HOWEVER, most damaging to her clique's position are the most expressive terms in which she expatiated on the grand theory that WE'RE ALL SO GAY because we oppose what she stands for. Let's try a little substitution exercise, shall we, with the analogy most cited by homosexuals to boost the rationality of their movement: the civil rights struggle of the 60's (or even emancipation). This is routinely held up by homosexuals as incontrovertible confirmation that their movement's underpinnings and ultimate fate are parallel with the former. Race is innate, immutable and so, they say, is the homosexual orientation. Race is an amoral characteristic of a person and, so they say, is h.o. Race is immaterial for equality and so, they say, is h.o.! Let's agree wholeheartedly.

And Droopy/Dewey was kind enoff to provide us with a semantic framework for confirming and elaborating on this parallelism; in her own words: "A true fact is that often times - more often than most people realize, that hate you feel toward (blacks) and the rejection of everything about it is simply a person who has been indoctrinated into an intolerant, hateful faith living in stark terror of their strong and continuing (identification) toward members of (another race). Because someone who is NOT in denial can EASILY see the inequity denying civil rights to others based on (race). So they decry (equal rights for blacks) because they know that if it was legal and sanctioned by government, they'd give into the temptation they live with every day."

Which temptation, old girl? For hypocritical heteros, its doing the nasty with those of their own sex; in the substitution, it's whites trying, by hook or by crook, to be black. The consequences of ignoring this subconscious yearning by whites, says Droopy/Dewey, are dire: "After all, your denial of your own (blackness) is not only hurting you, it's hurting your family and likely cutting your life short." So, kid, either the whole analogy thing is a bucketful of wishful thinking, or the place was and is crawling with white people wanting to be black. Thanks, you would-be demagogue, for exposing a little bit more of the hopeless inanity that is homosexuality's reason-for being. For heterosexuals, a nice gesture on the part of poor, clueless Droopy/Dewey.

The young people in the world today rightly consider faith garbage... at the very least the is a trend for the younger to claim to be ireigious.

The point is that as the aging population dies away so does their fair tale faiths in the civilized world.

The Muslim would might live on awhile before their young people catch on.... but then again the midle east is generally a 3rd world garbage pit complely governed by a poorly wrriten book by a man who enjoyed screwing young teenage women.

The bible is a book of cobbled together stories Stolen from earlier religions so that it would be easier to indoctrinate new sheep into the flock... and sheep they are.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is older than the bible and if you were to read it you would notice that the so called Holy Bible has ripped off portions of it including a Great Flood and a Savior that was a carpenter... The Zoroastrians gave you even more material the plagiarize into the bible.

What you have is a Bronze Age book of fairy tales that is as Holy as Readers Digest or a roll of Toilet Paper... Nothing More.

The GOP will say anything that gets them into power, but until they start introducing legislation that revokes the exclusions of gay marriage civil rights (like Prop 8), it's just their usual lip service.

They've been lying to their supporters for decades, but those ignorant clowns didn't notice them while their attention was on the smokescreen BS the GOP put out to distract them away from the fact that the GOP was robbing them blind, giving their money to the wealthy.

Well, it's easy to cheat the faithful. Just tell them you believe what they believe and they'll follow you anywhere. Con artists have been doing this for as long as religion has been around. Some of them are even part of the congregation, but most of them lead it.

So while the self-righteous egocentrics decry homosexuality as a sin, they forget that you can't deny people the same civil rights because of their, or your, religion in THIS country. Iran and the Middle East, sure. Just remember, folks, the only way that gay marriages can affect you or anyone else in ANY WAY is because you, or they, are gay to begin with.. A true fact is that often times - more often than most people realize, that hate you feel toward gays and the rejection of everything about it is simply a person who has been indoctrinated into an intolerant, hateful faith living in stark terror of their strong and continuing sexual feelings toward members of the same gender. Because someone who is NOT in denial can EASILY see the inequity denying civil rights to others based on gender. So they decry gay marriage because they know that if it was legal and sanctioned by government, they'd give into the temptation they live with every day.

Yaawwn! It's late and everybody's gotta be tired, but I'll leave just this one parting shot for heterosexuality (of which, according to the stats, belong the vast majority of the pop. The homosexual community, on the other hand, make a level of noise that is far out of proportion to their reduced numbers. And are you, straight man or woman, helping to up the volume on that boom box? It may come back to haunt you, and I'll tell you how in due time.). But here goes, plagiarizing from a comment I saw on another forum, posted by a kindred soul:

"I have, myself, full
confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best
arrangements are made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our
public morality, to ride out the storm of deviance, and to outlive the menace
of homosexuality, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

Even though large tracts of America
and many old and famous Institutions have fallen or may fall into the grip of
the GAYS and all the odious apparatus of political correctness, we shall not
flag or fail.

We shall go on to the end, we
shall fight in the marketplace of ideas,
we shall fight in the courts and government lobbies,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength on the airwaves, we
shall defend our families, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight in the fast food industry,
we shall fight in the shopping centers,
we shall fight in the film industry and in sports,
we shall fight in the schools;
we shall never surrender..!"

True marriage is not an institution legislated by any government. It predated any government. It is of divine origin. Even the uncivilized tribes recognize its worth. It is not subject to popularity votes. And its pure, unblemished definition is that of a lawful or community-approved union of a man and a woman for the expression of heterosexual love and for begetting children.

Any government has no constitutional right in dipping its finger and redefining marriage to include gay marriage. Either traditional marriage is a constitutionally-recognized social institution or it is not. Since it is the former, any government is wrong to alter what is inherent and universally accepted in human societies.

The argument for traditional marriage is for the lawful perpetuation of the human species. In contrast, in its full sway, gay marriage will depopulate the earth IN JUST ONE GENERATION. In the judgment of an all-knowing God, by their sodomy, Sodom and Gomorrah had lost their justification for existing, and God destroyed these two cities by fire and brimstone. Since many honest Americans still believe in Bible, let them search the book, particularly, Genesis 19: 1-25. Jesus attested to the two cities' destruction.

The gays should be allowed to love and live together - the society owes them as much - but to legislate gay marriage is to redefine the pure, exalting, traditional marriage which is an institution beyond the ambit of government authority.

Rights and privileges like social security, access to the armed forces, government, and business enclaves, etc. can be legislated for the gays. A kind of legal union, short of marriage, may even be lawfully instituted that will tackle future estate distribution and other ticklish issues, but the purity of traditional marriage must remain untarnished by human hands. As with His wrath with Sodom and Gomorrah, Deity will make his utter displeasure gradually and inexorably felt in a nation that has professed Jesus Christ to be her God.

Actually we're not. But if you tell a lie long enough eventually people will start to believe the lie. It's called disinformation and Time engages in it like the rest of the mainstream liberal media does.

The Republicans who are saying "I do" to gay marriage are the RNC and the elitist GOP political dinosaurs inside the beltway. They and their cheer-leader Carl Rove, "The Architect Whose Building Fell Down", will do or say anything to get moderate Republicans elected to office. They paid no attention to the election results last time. More than 4 million GOP voters who came out to vote for John McCain stayed home and didn't vote for Mitt Romney last November. Why? Because he was an even worse RINO than "maverick" McCain, and they, despite what the RNC and the Party elites thought, DID have another choice besides Barak Obama: they could stay home. And they did. Unless the GOP can come up with some reasonably conservative candidates who have a solid set of morals and actually do what they say they are going to do, the Democrats will keep on winning and the Republican Party will fade away like the Whigs in the late 1850's. Pandering to sexual or ethnic minority groups will not get them elected; such tactics simply alienate the base.

I'm just curious, as I never understood the argument for gay marriage. While I agree that the gay population should have the same rights as everyone else, what is homosexuality based upon? Free love? Or an innate preference in sexuality? Or something else? Just curious

Being left-handed – being black or being gay is just
as natural. It is a sometimes rare
occurrence to fall in Love and to hold that person in your heart and be loved
in return ... it is something that should be celebrated! If it’s between two guys or two girls -- all
the better. It takes even more courage
to defend that LOVE!

"We
the People of the United States"
Creating a Transient City in a Desert.
Fueled by all fifty states of the United States.

To
be a central point for all federal and state inmates of all the states of the
United States to be placed in one location.

Having
a training center for the Military Police of the National Guard, Reservist, and
Police-SWAT Academy placement.

A new approach educators training center.
Creating new educators to teach and instruct students of current grade levels
of K through 4th grade: Pencil drawing, Basic applied math for a
simple business, English writing. Including teaching study habits to be
successful

Update
the grade completion level to next grade level with course completion. If the
course is not completed, then the student will redo just that course not
completed.

Note:
As long as the adults view children as childish children and not as young
adults in a new world learning new ways and new language, you’ll have a
children in a longer status of being children that may lose interest in future
education for careers.

Mocking
this will only prove your own skill set of being unteachable.

An Insurance Hub to collect insurance money in
one location for all the states of the United States with still the customer
selection of which Health Care, Eye Care, Dental Care etc… Automotive and asset
insurances providers to choose from.

Large
tent city camps for transients and homeless persons. With work exchange for
housing available.

This
motion is to consolidate the homeless and transients in one location on a
voluntary basis with hope that charity groups that help the homeless will also
be involved for whatever workshops could help these people.

With
the money and technology for the Mars rover and to future populate Mars with
people; will be to turn that focus into the United States and create a bunker
style Agriculture, Vegetable, Meats and Fish farm underground. To aid family
farms and disaster relief foods and clothing needs.

This
will not be a government ran city; but a city operated and maintenance by the
public of all the states of the United States

Transportation
of people to and from the Transient City in a Desert will be by bus or single light
rail system. Freight by truck or on the single light rail system.

*One
of the means to be able to start such a project is to put the United States in
a state of emergency like a severe imminent war.Each tax collecting-spending unit of
government will need to rebuild the need to collect-spend taxes on an absolute
need. Purpose is to rebuild the economy creating a mechanism to keep the
economy healthy. Many jobs need to be created and made permanent in the United
States.

There
is a need for the public “We the People of the United States”, to create many
locations in the United States with the technology for the Mars rover and to
future populate Mars with people; bunker style Agriculture, Vegetable, Meats
and Fish farm underground. To aid family farms and disaster relief foods and
clothing needs and also the intent to keep cost of foods down.

Are
we expecting war? War is not the focus. The focus is too many lame name-it and
claim-it empty actions saying we are people of the United States and act as a
divided people!

“We
the People of the United States” each have their own personal lives and
awareness; but as public in a Great Nation called the United States it is most
desirable to become United to make sure each citizen is living and not just
surviving hour-by-hour, day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year. After all, it
took unity to start the United States, really be nice to be one public team of
We the People of the United States to help one another.

As long as homosexual marriage is not enemy to the United States and there is enough votes to pass it, then it would be acceptable. The United States itself is missing the greater of the future of the United State's Sovereignty. A whole lot of nick picking civil and diversity rights when this nation is "We the People of the United States". It should be noted who is "We the People of the United States", and who is creating the need for civil and diversity rights. We the People of the United States is just that! Citizens of the United States, and who is restriction such rights is divisive!

Funny how when something happens to them their views immediately change, a full 180 because his son is gay. Also part of the outreach? Rebranding the GOP?

Personally, I will not be lulled to sleep with any GOP outreach. Why: Because its phony, its not meant to be really inclusive, its only meant to widen the base. The wacky candidates will still be there but the bottom line will still be the same. Bad enough the bible belters are hypnotizedm I sure hope people will be able to smeel a rat when The GOP proposes Saint Peter's day (everyday has a saint) day as the Latino community's equivalent to MLK day. Lets see what they do when the right wing of the supreme court reverses hard won rights for blacks. Lets see the GOP pass up on the opportunity to repeal voting laws...somehow I think not which would basically mean that outreach is just a vote grabber.

The only thing that matters is the children who will grow up in these homes. I don't care what gay adults do but someone must care about the children and no, they don't grow up healthy in gay homes because they grow up thinking that gay is normal, which it is not. They grow up being taunted and marginalized in school which makes them more susceptible to becoming gay themselves because they feel that they don't fit in anywhere else. And most importantly they grow up in a home that has a 1 in 2.5 chance of having a parent with HIV which means that they are at constant risk of contracting a fatal disease should they come into contact with infected blood when they have a cut or if they happen to use the wrong toothbrush. How in the world can this country sacrifice innocent children to a dubious political cause just because it's trendy? Children are not political pawns...they are young, vulnerable people who deserve a chance to grow up good and strong and wholesome.

Amazing how many defective minds are willing to follow a Bronze Age text to decide how society should be governed.

The bible may be just as holy as a roll of toilet paper and fills the job of the latter better than it does as a guide to living.

Your Bronze Age God of spite and mysteries very well may not exist at all... His prophet Son had some great wisdom which to live by, and that wisdom is to love your enemies.... Live your own life and let others live theirs without infringing upon their life choices that are none of your damned business.

God really doesn't want any place in government. It's only because of Him that a government can exist. It's a fact that the bible has existed for all these years. Napoleon is probably a myth since neither you or me have ever seen him either.